Some Recent Worthless, Incomprehensible, Intellectual and Philosophic Musings of Mine

I, dear readers, am going to commit, herewith, herein, hereof, as well as perpetrate (as in criminally) a modicum, nay, make that a rather large ration of logorrhea of highly intellectual, philosophic and polemical ruminations. Or rather, one could also describe it thusly as a whole passel of elitist, intellectual “heavy-osity” (or just plain “heaviosity” as well).

But probably a more apt and succinct, more appropriate and accurate description of it would also be; a rather large ration of refried-shit-for-brains, and your simple and standard, most basic, common, prosaic, quotidian, normal, run-of-the-mill, typical, de rigueur, fundamentally, quintessential “intellectual masturbation.” So thusly, Sic caput excrementi transit, for truly you have now been forewarned.

The subject in question is political science, and the issue is whether the former is a truly valid, legitimate, worthy and bonafide, intellectual, academic and scholastic discipline, or is it simply a vast and risible oxymoron. Well, on the first count I say no; and on the second, I say yes, and emphatically so!

Historically and traditionally, political science simply did not exist. In the very much wider and broader scheme of things, political science is a rather recent phenomenon which prior to the modern era was simply dealt with as a subset and natural adjunct of the study of history. (Here, meaning history as an analytical, critical and factual record of events as first posited by Thucydides in the beginning of the third century BC, and to a lesser extent in the histories of Herodotus roughly fifty years prior to Thucydides. The former created written, recorded history rather than history through oral recitation and its poetic and formulaic recital and depiction of the exploits and deeds of kings, princes and/or legendary heroes and mythical figures and characters.)

But analytical, critical and factual history quickly developed as a major component of philosophy; of first, moral philosophy, and then quickly, in turn, of political philosophy, which again, was a natural and necessary outcome and direction of the former, i.e., the study of philosophy; as especially evinced in the Republic and philosophic Dialogues of Plato, and in the Politics of Aristotle. Livy, Tacitus, Plutarch, Caesar, Polybius et al; to Gibbon and Carlyle and a host of others who continued this factual and analytical, historical tradition for centuries until the present. Moreover, political science as a separate and distinct academic discipline did not appear until the late nineteenth century. All well and good.

But as I see it, political science is also part of a much larger and broader issue, well actually, problem, or well, make that a larger and broader intellectual, academic and scholastic fraud! To wit: the social, so-called, supposed sciences. I describe the latter (the social sciences) as anything but science and view them with great distrust; all of which must also always be questioned with a rather heavy dose of skepticism and be taken with a very, very small grain of salt as well.

Yes, to be sure, there are, of course, a few golden nuggets of worthwhile knowledge and wisdom contained within them; but the vast and predominant amount of worthless, illegitimate data et facta, and so-called, supposed knowledge is so Himalayan in nature, in both quantity and lack of quality, and the effort required to retrieve them so extraordinarily and exponentially so vast and difficult that it is simply not worth the effort. In this regard allow me to offer this analogy: I liken the worthiness and verisimilitude, efficacy and benefit of the social sciences to a pet theory of mine created almost forty years ago. I call it the “Forty Million Monkeys with Forty Million Typewriters in a Room Unified Field Theorem or Thesis.”

The central and salient theme of this thesis (of this Unified Field Theorem) is basically that, if one were to lock up forty million monkeys in a single, but of course, rather large, nay, make that a rather gigantic and humongous room, and hand out one typewriter to each and every single one of them, at least one of these monkeys, by the simple rules of probability, chance, numbers, statistics and above all else, pure, dumb luck, that at least one of them would become the second coming of Shakespeare or an even greater and more powerful inheritor to Einstein. In the case of the former, at least one of these monkeys would write sonnets and poetry and plays which would far surpass even Shakespeare himself in their greatness and grandeur by magnitudes of worlds; and in the case of the latter, at least one of these monkeys would take scientific relativity and physics to an even greater and higher level, and exponentially so, beyond Einstein his very self.

Well, our universities and colleges have been attempting this procrustean, Panglossian experiment for over a hundred years now, and I really don’t see too many, in fact any, Shakespeares or Einsteins at all running around their universe of college and university campuses; or in the real world of ours, of cities and factories, businesses and states and other assorted real places grounded in reality (mostly; you know there are Disneyland and Washington, D.C. and many other fantasy theme parks too).

Which to be fair is rather unfair to both college students and their professors and of course, to monkeys, especially so to monkeys. Why? How? Because those monkeys, I mean people, in our colleges and universities are supposed to be smart, la crême de la crême, (especially and particularly, the social, so-called, supposed scientists) whom we highly and overly value; these armies and legions of worthless, non-productive intellectuals, these battened hens in a coop, these feckless dilettantes and worthless clowns, these spoiled and pampered, over-paid, under-worked, prima donnas, these second and third-rate monks in ivory cloisters; these politically correct intellectual, philosophic and ideological fascists, these fashionably chic, Marxist and Neo-Marxist “radiclibs” to whom, as a consequence of our over estimation, appraisal and valuation (of them), we give much too much credence and power. We not only listen to these intellectual, academic and professional fools, charlatans, quacks and witchdoctors, but we also heed their advice, recommendations, pet theories, phony cures and smarmy panaceas and pay them princely sums for their professional incompetence, quackery and buffoonery.

Whereas, with monkeys it is purely a matter of science, biology and Darwinian Evolutionary theory and actual, practical, observable, demonstrable, factual development. Monkeys might be a barrel of fun, but they simply ain’t going to write Shakespeare or reinvent and further advance physics and science; not whether it’s four hundred million of them locked in a room with the latest, most advanced computers, nor whether it’s four billion of them, nor forty billion nor forty trillion, just ain’t gonna happen!

But a quick aside or footnote here: What will happen, and I assure you dear readers, of its certainty as day follows the night, there will be a lot of excrementum (which is a euphemism whose usage is two-fold, both as a legitimate clinical and scientific term, and also as one utilized in literature as a vulgar, crude and salacious, idiomatic slang term for “shit.” As in brown, slimy, stinky, putrid, malodorous, disgusting shit! I again assure you dear readers, that there will be a whole, humungous bunch of shit in that room. And moreover, those monkeys are even bigger slobs than human beings; in fact, if anything is true, they are not antiseptic, anal-retentive neurotic, weirdos, so they will not neatly pile their excrementum (i.e., their shit) in antiseptic enclosures, but rather will pelt each other with their own shit and do so with great alacrity and joy. To wit: they will smear each other with their own shit and turn that room into one, huge, humungous shit-hole, which come to think of it, is exactly what liberals and progressives and secular leftists do to everything they touch and or manage.

In fact, I refer to this as the liberal (progressive, secular, leftist/radical) “brown touch” as opposed to the Midas, or gold touch. For you see, simply stated, everything liberals et al, etc., touch, literally turns into shit, whereas everything King Midas touched (and oh by the way, for the sake of this metaphor and analogy, King Midas was a conservative) turned into, bright, shiny gold. And for those of you with a worthless, feckless, substandard, liberal governmental, public school education, allow me to express this in terms that even you can possibly understand: conservatives, that is, true conservatives and not these RINOS or “go along, get along, me too, Republican liberal-lights”, but real conservatives, create bling and lots of it; whereas liberals, and especially President Obama, possess the brown touch, causing everything he and they touch to turn into shit! End of footnote.

There is another analogy or metaphor which I am rather fond of in describing the social, so-called, supposed sciences. I have no name nor title for it, rather, I see it as a basic metaphor and tenet which accurately and precisely explains and describes the fundamental, intellectual, philosophic, academic, scholastic, professional, and yes, ideological underpinnings of the social, so-called, supposed sciences.

Imagine that deep within the bowels of these Himalayan mountains of refried-shit-for-brains and monumental and limitless, intellectual masturbation there actually exists a few, small, nay, make that tiny, as in teeny-weeny kernels of legitimate, worthwhile, bonafide and even, yes, important nuggets of both knowledge and wisdom. But then imagine that some social, so-called, supposed scientist, arms you with a toy plastic scooper and a toy plastic pail, let us say, no more than a quart in capacity: and then this voodoo witchdoctor, con artist, flim-flam, hocus-pocus, refried-shit-for-brains, intellectual masturbation, psychobabbler instructs and orders you to find these hidden, golden nuggets of wisdom and knowledge with the very same worthless, feckless and counter-productive tools he has just provided you.

Daunting task, n’est-ce pas? Well, yes, of course; in a billion years or two. Probable? Well, as I see it, this monkey has about as much, in fact less, of a chance of finding that golden nugget of knowledge and wisdom than those proverbial forty million monkeys locked up in a room with forty million state-of-the-art, supercharged super computers.

The question for me then becomes, is it really worth the effort? To be thoroughly and brutally honest, I am sorely divided and conflicted on this issue, because I do see a need and a legitimate, albeit limited place for the social, so-called, supposed, voodoo witchdoctor, psychobabbler, non-science, quasi-science at best, pseudo-sciences in our lives. But I also see the very many, vast dangers of their quackery and buffoonery and yes, once more again, their ideological agendas which are remarkably and decidedly left-wing and Marxist. However this latter point is just one controversial issue too far removed for this little composition of mine.

But unfortunately, reality has a way of intruding upon even these worthless musings of mine. As for the efficacy of the social, so-called, supposed, scientific psychobabbler establishment in America today: should there be any doubt or wonder at all why so many Casey Breziks and Jared Loughtons go undetected? Unfortunately, the sad truth of the matter is that even if they were found out, the chances of their cure and our protection from them, and of their not being subject to abuse themselves from an institutional system of snake pits; with the current practice of not holding and housing these very dangerous madmen in isolated and secluded asylums but instead, placing them and supposedly maintaining them in mainstream society, well the chances of their cure and or palliation and our protection vary from somewhere between infinitesimally slim to zero.

But allow me dear readers, to return to the original thesis of mine posited concerning the intellectual legitimacy, bonafides, efficacy and worth of political science. Simply stated, the reason why I so strongly hold and vigorously maintain that the term and academic and scholastic discipline of political science is an oxymoron is the following: there is very little, or rather, there is absolutely nothing scientific about political science, whereas, as we have recently seen, especially as it relates to climate change and global warming, real science, or so-called, supposed, mainstream science, is extremely and thoroughly political, and I might add, in the most petty, vicious and vindictive manner possible as, regrettably, it exists within the long tradition of Academia.

To wit: the “political” of political science is extraordinarily subjective and prone to monumental speculation rooted in pet biases and highly personal and partisan interpretations and analyses. Throw into this unholy mix a lot of what the Greeks called the “potential optative,” a grammatical construction in which one is essentially dealing with a lot of should haves, would haves, and statements contrary to fact, or ultimately points of fact which are essentially and solely the result of wishful thinking at best, and at worst, are whims, caprices and personal biases and preferences not based in fact. Well, I personally do not find anything scientific about wishful thinking and lame-brained, highly personalized, highly subjective, pet theories and tendentious and partisan biases, whims and caprices. And by the way, I am being rather kind and gentle here; in fact, extraordinarily kind to those many fraudulent practitioners of political, so-called, supposed science.

And as for science itself, real, true science, there is a very long history and tradition of mindless, procrustean conformism to essentially unscientific conclusions, analyses and beliefs which, quite often are politically motivated and professionally driven. When it comes to science, there has always been a consensus of likeminded, scientific lemmings; in fact, a veritable legion of suck-up, toady, kiss-ass, brown-nosing Uriah Heaps within the realm and very ranks of science, alas, since the very dawn of time itself. And many of these toady, suck-up, kiss-ass, brown-nosing scientific lemmings have on many and numerous occasions proven themselves to have been a very nasty lot indeed. Just look back to Galileo and the Church, but we need not just pick on the Church either. In fact that’s just too easy a task and too simpleminded, like taking candy from a baby or expecting a monkey to write Shakespeare. There are also Scopes and Darrow, a true three ring circus if I have ever seen one; as well as the current unassailable, Darwinian orthodoxy; and the ascendency of moral relativism (truly in my estimation, the most evil philosophy ever devised by humankind) wrongly devised from the Einsteinian science of relativity (which again, in my estimation, is a distortion of physics and pure mathematics; to be clear, not Einstein, of course, but the relativists); or extremely doctrinaire, secularism and the so-called, supposed pure reason of postmodernist, materialism and dialecticalism.

The point is, there is real, bonafide, legitimate and true science which is solely the province and realm of a very few; merely a handful of true and legitimate scientists. While the vast majority of so-called, supposed scientists are populated by vast hordes of phonies and intellectual louts and frauds and pseudo scientists whom I liken to those infamous Himalayan mountains of intellectual masturbation, refried-shit-for-brains and a whole ration of unscientific “should haves” and “would haves” full of highly subjective and highly personalized predilections, preferences, biases, etc..

Irv, I’m only on page 2 and already have a question. Are you claiming credit for originating what you call the “Forty Million Monkeys with Forty Million Typewriters …” theory?

French mathematician Émile Borel laid out the idea in hard natural science terms (as opposed to the soft social sciences you disdain) in his 1913 article “Mécanique Statistique et Irréversibilité.” In his 1939 essay “The Total Library,” Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges traced the infinite-monkey concept to Aristotle’s Metaphysics, of which you are not doubt well versed.

Despite these precedents, Irv, you date the notion back only 40 years, by which time it had already entered American popular culture. For example, comedian Bob Newhart’s “An Infinite Number of Monkeys” routine from his 1960 album The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back!

Thanks for your fucking comments. Actually I have Borel’s essay “Statistical Mechanics and Irreversibility” right here in front of me, mixed in with my porn mags and pix.

Am I impressed with your knowledge of statistics, yeah, I say rather reluctantly and begrudgingly. So have a nice fucking day.

And finish the goddamn article, I just can’t wait for your friendly but devastating commentary in which you will point out that I can’t write a lick and that I personally am not dumb as a rock, but rather, that I am dumber than said rock. So am waiting with fucking baited breath.

“Bated” as in mastur”bate”r breath. Yes my bad. Called an error of DICTION!

My question to you first, did you read the entire medium-sized overstuffed fucking turkey yet?

Yeah, it’s been in the popular culture since the fifties as I recall, which shows how fucking dated and geezer and old fart, Methuselah-esque we two truly are.

No, I don’t think I knowingly purloined it, i.e., plagiarized it. Rather I retrieved it from the depths of my memory and through the process of cultural ozz-moh-zez, and my intellectual freedom of autistic license, I embellished on an idea that I kept stored in the back of my head for the past fifty plus years.

Is that satisfactory for you Allen, or do you got to beat this dead fucking horse into fucking salami?

Your critique fails to recognize the methodological diversity of poli sci. As a study of human behavior, poli sci naturally encompasses both science and the humanities. The field’s very name acknowledges its composite approach. Yet poli sci over the past 100 years has increasingly adopted the scientific method to quantitatively model and test hypotheses, refine empirical research, and apply more rigorous statistical analysis using such interdisciplinary tools as econometrics.

Even so, poli sci remains by definition an observational, not a theoretical or experimental science. For you to castigate poli sci for not being physics entirely misses the point.

Are you saying because it’s not exactly “physics” and therefore true, legitimate science, even though its title and its terminology clearly states the word “science” in it, that somehow that’s OK? That somehow it is justifiable and defensible because it ain’t real science?

Well, dim fuck (or should that read dim sum?), that’s exactly my point – it ain’t science, not even close. Econometrics – shmonometrics. That’s just icing on your shit cake. Furthermore, econometrics and economics are also not what one would reasonably or rationally describe as truly legitimate science; perhaps highly subjective and “fuzzy” science at best, and just pure intellectual masturbation and bullshit at the other end of the spectrum.

So let’s get this clear here, are you saying because it really ain’t real science, that we shouldn’t hold these intellectual, academic and scholastic frauds, phonies and charlatans up to much higher standards? Is that what you are sayin’? Alen. Well, defend that motherfucker!

Irv, given an open ended time variable, the number of monkeys is not important and the idea reduces to The Monkey Thesis — solving much of your brown stuff problem — where the monkey is a model for random process substitutable for by any random process for example error often referred to as ‘shit’ as in “Shit happens” which you deny when you you claim that no Shakespeare will result leaving the only possible conclusion being that you accept the proposition that there are no accidents at all which seems decidedly too new age for the likes of you you old bastard. It is a comfort knowing that when — not if — our war toys glitch and blow us all to hell we can blame the fucking monkey; would you deny our Elite Scientists their consolation and access to their motto: Not My Fault?

Deano

I’m just impressed Alan made it that far into the article. I tuned out at “logorrhea” …

How It’s Made had a farrier on last night. It inspired me to watch a hoof trim video. I just sorta thought you just order horse shoes and then nail them to the horse.

I am surprised that the farriers in the show did not wear hearing protection when they made the horse shoes. Must be hard on the ears. And all that bending over all day. Holy smokes, that would kill me in 20 minutes, tops.

What I wonder, Mark, is, do you have to carry the anvil and equipment to the horse to do the shoes? Or does the horse come to you for shoes?

We had a horse and ponies, as a kid, and a farrier came to the place. But I guess it didn’t pay that much attention.

RE # 4. Did I invent the Infinite Monkey Theorem or am I deceitfully and deviously taking credit for it? Again, no, I’m not that dimly lit nor that maddeningly obscurantist. However what I am doing is making fun of it [Gratuitous vulgarity deleted by Comments Editor].

Well, apparently you’re attracted to it, Mr. Kurtz, or should I say Steve.

Besides, I wouldn’t exactly characterize Irv’s article as “thoughtful,” your choice of words, don’t wiggle out of it now. To his credit – and yes, I AM giving him the benefit of the doubt – it was his usual tongue in cheek. It is you Mr. Kurtz, or shall I keep on referring to you as “Steve” from now on? – who always keeps on missing the point because (as some poster has already suggested) there is not an iota of “humour” in you, no sense of proportion, no conception of human failings, only an inflated sense of your own grandiose self.

Must be some mistake. Surely you don’t include me among the finest writers on the Internet.

Glenn Contrarian

Alan –

If I had felt that Irvin’s article was worth commenting on, I would have done so. But the youtube clip brought smiles to myself (and my family) and to other BC members, and these few minutes of mirth were obviously worth far more than discussing Irvin’s – ahem! – article. If that offends you, then I’m sorry…but I’ve had articles panned before, and I have no problem with being humble enough to accept my article being ignored.

EVERY author posts a substandard article once in a while. IMO this was Mr. Cohen’s turn. But the youtube video was brilliant!

Costello

I stumbled across this looking up the monkey quote anyone heard these charming gentleman as of late?

Costello, the protest site they set up in response to what they saw as Blogcritics’ stifling of their freedom of speech (the decision to ban them from posting here was taken later), has had some interesting developments in its brief history.

First of all, having undertaken never to edit or delete any comments (unlike the dastardly BC comments editors), they proceeded to disable commenting entirely, having discovered that actually, yes, negative and anti-social commenting does detract from a website’s usability.

Then – and this is the best part – the two rebels had a falling-out, which ended up being so severe that… wait for it… one of them banned the other.

The site appears still to be active, but is now “by invitation only”, which seems to indicate that its remaining founder has decided once and for all that unfettered openness isn’t all it was cracked up to be.